Newton: Northants have outside chance at Notts

Tom Vickers

Rob Newton believes Northants are in with an outside chance of beating Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge on the final day of the Specsavers County Championship Division Two clash.

The County finished day three on 164 for seven after a promising start was undone by three wickets before the close.

Newton departed for 53 before Richard Levi (4) and Rob Keogh (0) went the same way.

Northants, who still have skipper Alex Wakely unbeaten on 31 and Josh Cobb on 36, need a further 253 runs on the final day to claim the win against the current league leaders.

But their task has been made more difficult by injuries to Adam Rossington (hand) and Ben Sanderson (hamstring).

“It’s been a tough couple of days with the injuries, particularly,” Newton said.

“We weren’t in a bad position yesterday when Sando (Ben Sanderson) went down but unfortunately you can only flog your seamers for so long and that really hurt us.

“But I thought we battled really hard tonight and throughout the day, so we’ve put ourselves within an outside chance, especially with a bit of rain. You don’t know.

“We’re happy to be four down but with the start we had maybe we could have been one better but I think we’d have taken 160 for four.

“We’re not always seen as the toughest in terms of being tough to get out.

“We play our shots, generally as a side, but once myself and Murph (David Murphy) had battled away for the first 60 or 70 that kind of set the tone for everyone else and that was a nice partnership at the end and I thought Wakers played really nicely.”